The Atonement Part 2: The Exodus Motif

Doc Ryan and Matt continue a series on
Atonement.


We’re probably all familiar with the story of the Exodus where
God calls Moses to stand up to Pharoah in order to set the
Hebrews free. There were 10 plagues and each of these plagues was
a judgement on an Egyptian god. Essentially, it’s a cosmic battle
here. Here is what God says about the 10th plague…


Exodus 12:1-13


12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down
every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will
bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord.
13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are,
and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive
plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.


Sea Crossing (Exodus 15)


It wasn’t called the "Red" Sea


It was the Greeks who started calling it the Red Sea. When
the LXX gets translated, The Egyptians not only didn’t refer to
it as the Red Sea, but they referred to all big bodies of water
as “the great green.”

Yam Suph means sea of reeds. The earlier meaning of the word
suph, if you go back further into the Middle Kingdom in Egypt,
suph meant the end, or the extremity, or the border, or the edge,
sort of the extreme part. So in that context, it would have meant
something like the sea at the end, the end sea or the border sea.

The Reed Sea is the sort of Egyptian equivalent, in the
Middle Kingdom—you see this in the Pyramid Texts—is the River
Styx. It’s the body of water you have to cross after death to get
to the place of your abode. In the Egyptian mind, when you see
some sort of border with water on it, you should be thinking
about entering into a realm of chaos and death (outside of the
camp) so, if you can get past this watery body, this Sea of
Reeds, then you’ll get to the other side, and you’ll have this
shadowy existence in the presence of the Egyptian gods.the
Pyramid Texts are burial texts, with spells and invocations to
help get the spirits and the gods to guide the ka, the soul of
the departed person, through the Sea of Reeds to the other side,
safely. if you don’t, you become one of the mkhay-u. The mkhay-u
are the drowned ones, is what that literally means. These are
people who get tangled in the reeds and get pulled down into the
Sea of Reeds and sort of lose their identity and become the
drowned ones. They’re the damned for Egyptians.

the Hebrews were ones who were guided through to the other
side were guided through safely to the other side to go and dwell
with their God in the promised land.


When we talk about Passover (Communion), and passing
from death to life, that’s not an allegorical thing. What
they’re telling us in the Song of the Sea is the people who
were there who experienced this the first time had the
experience of passing through death, passing through the realm
of death and being brought through safely to the other side, to
new life, by Yahweh the God of Israel. And
that’s the experience we’re sharing in
when we celebrate Passover



Passover: Deut 16:1-7, 2 Chron 30:13-20


2 Key things: Exodus is rescue from death and deliverance from
slavery


It’s a judgement on the Powers

We don’t see any debt or sin language involved here

God is purchasing a people (releasing them from slavery) and
calling them His sons and daughters, but not a purchase as a
legal metaphor.

Passover sacrifices were a community meal (think communion)
to celebrate being rescued and the defeat of the oppressive
powers over God’s people



Since the Exodus was Jesus’ primary motif for communicating His
crucifixion, we need to put this as a primary metaphor when we
think about the cross and its effects.